MODERN SURGERY

Dominion, Volume 25, Issue 144, 14 March 1932, Page 8

MODERN SURGERY

Influence of Lord Lister’s Work MR. C. H. FAGGE’S SURVEY Dominion Special Service. Auckland, March 12. In a working life of some 35 years Mr. C. H. Fagge, of Guy’s eHospital, Loudon, the eminent surgeon, who represented the. parent body at the New Zealand conference of the British Medical Association, has seen the advent of nearly all the most Important discoveries that make up modern surgical technique. In an interview yesterday Mr. Fagge made some valuable observations upon the progress of surgery and gave some hints of developments that may be looked for In the future. Almost everything that was done in modern surgical treatment had been made possible as Ji direct result of Lord Lister’s worlgin the employment of antiseptics to prevent the poisoning of surgical and other wounds, said Mr. Fagge. Not even the practical application of anaesthetics had had so great an influence upon surgical progress. It was strange to recall how very little use was made of Lister’s discovery by contemporary surgeons, and stranger still when the importance of the work was at last appreciated and applied to the limited number of surgical operations which were then practised, that many of the' leaders of the profession believed that the ultimate stage in the development of surgery had been reached, that surgical methods for the treatment of sickness and disease were at a dead end. Yet at that stage surgery, as known to-day, had hardly been begun. It was not until the middle ’nineties that the surgical treatment of the abdominal organs was seriously attempted. The striking success ’of preliminary" abdominal work probably served to indicate the immense possibilities of surgical development, and there was no lack of workers to elaborate technique. Debt to Other Sciences. “My conclusion from the surgical progress of the last 30 years or so is that this progress has been due mainly to the readiness of the surgeon to adapt the discoveries of workers in quite different spheres to the treatment of sickness or the discovery of its causes,” said Mr. Fagge. “A good, popular example of what I mean is provided by the extraordinary application which has been found, both in medicine and surgery, for the X-ray, the discovery of which was the work of a brilliant physicist who, presumably, knew nothing either of medicine or surgery. To surgery alone the employment of the X-ray has proved of incalculable value. '■“Some of. the more recent work in surgery is of particular interest and of great significance In showing how even the most complex and vital parts of the body may be treated with the knife,” continued Mr. Fagge. “Recently extraordinary progress has been made in surgical treatment of certain parts of the nervous system. This work has produced results of great importance, and it is proceeding rapidly. Now preliminary work is being done upon the brain, the lungs, and even the heart itself, all organs which, until recently, the surgeon avoided. “The scope of this treatment is so far constricted mainly because of the physical limitations under which it is conducted. All these organs are of a vital nature, and, in the case of the brain particularly, their working is imperfectly understood. Because of this, and because of his present lack of knowledge ’of the effects of treatment, the extent to which it may be carried, and the best methods of applying it, the surgeon must proceed cautiously. In dealing with , these branches of his work, the surgeon is confronted by an impenetrated wall of ignorance, but it is only necessary to look back a fpw years to sec that obstacles quite as formidable have been completely overcome, and I have no doubt that the ignorance on these subjects also will ultimately be dispelled.” The Attack On Cancer.

Regarding the control of cancer, Mr. Fagge deprecated undue optimism. “The problem is being attacked from many angles, and various methods now being developed have proved successful in dealing with certain forms of the disease,” he said. “On some types radium has proved invaluable. The response of others to new forms of treatment by penetrating X-rays is little short of miraculous, and other new forms of,treatment have given promising results. Other, types of the disease will yield well to the knife, and to the knife alone, and others again will respond to no treatment, and seem likely to remain unresponsive for the present. Curative science is doing its utmost to surmount one of the biggest problems it has yet tackled. That it will ultimately be successful I am hopeful, but that it has still a hard task before it I am certain.”